scholarly journals Explaining discrepancies between spectral and in-situ plant diversity in multispectral satellite earth observation

2021 ◽  
Vol 265 ◽  
pp. 112684
Author(s):  
Leon T. Hauser ◽  
Joris Timmermans ◽  
Niels van der Windt ◽  
Ângelo F. Sil ◽  
Nuno César de Sá ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Earth Observation

scholarly journals Fiducial Reference Measurements for Satellite Ocean Colour (FRM4SOC)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Clive Banks ◽  
Riho Vendt ◽  
Krista Alikas ◽  
Agnieszka Bialek ◽  
Joel Kuusk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
White Paper ◽  
Uncertainty Estimation ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Ocean Colour ◽  
Satellite Validation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Earth Observation Data ◽  
Reference Measurements

Earth observation data can help us understand and address some of the grand challenges and threats facing us today as a species and as a planet, for example climate change and its impacts and sustainable use of the Earth’s resources. However, in order to have confidence in earth observation data, measurements made at the surface of the Earth, with the intention of providing verification or validation of satellite-mounted sensor measurements, should be trustworthy and at least of the same high quality as those taken with the satellite sensors themselves. Metrology tells us that in order to be trustworthy, measurements should include an unbroken chain of SI-traceable calibrations and comparisons and full uncertainty budgets for each of the in situ sensors. Until now, this has not been the case for most satellite validation measurements. Therefore, within this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) funded a series of Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) projects targeting the validation of satellite data products of the atmosphere, land, and ocean, and setting the framework, standards, and protocols for future satellite validation efforts. The FRM4SOC project was structured to provide this support for evaluating and improving the state of the art in ocean colour radiometry (OCR) and satellite ocean colour validation through a series of comparisons under the auspices of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS). This followed the recommendations from the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group’s white paper and supports the CEOS ocean colour virtual constellation. The main objective was to establish and maintain SI traceable ground-based FRM for satellite ocean colour and thus make a fundamental contribution to the European system for monitoring the Earth (Copernicus). This paper outlines the FRM4SOC project structure, objectives and methodology and highlights the main results and achievements of the project: (1) An international SI-traceable comparison of irradiance and radiance sources used for OCR calibration that set measurement, calibration and uncertainty estimation protocols and indicated good agreement between the participating calibration laboratories from around the world; (2) An international SI-traceable laboratory and outdoor comparison of radiometers used for satellite ocean colour validation that set OCR calibration and comparison protocols; (3) A major review and update to the protocols for taking irradiance and radiance field measurements for satellite ocean colour validation, with particular focus on aspects of data acquisition and processing that must be considered in the estimation of measurement uncertainty and guidelines for good practice; (4) A technical comparison of the main radiometers used globally for satellite ocean colour validation bringing radiometer manufacturers together around the same table for the first time to discuss instrument characterisation and its documentation, as needed for measurement uncertainty estimation; (5) Two major international side-by-side field intercomparisons of multiple ocean colour radiometers, one on the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) oceanographic cruise, and the other on the Acqua Alta oceanographic tower in the Gulf of Venice; (6) Impact and promotion of FRM within the ocean colour community, including a scientific road map for the FRM-based future of satellite ocean colour validation and vicarious calibration (based on the findings of the FRM4SOC project, the consensus from two major international FRM4SOC workshops and previous literature, including the IOCCG white paper on in situ ocean colour radiometry).

scholarly journals Copernicus: the European Earth Observation programme

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Jutz ◽  
M.P. Milagro-Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Models ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
In Situ Sensors ◽  
Earth Observation Data ◽  
Observation Programme

<span>The European Union-led Copernicus programme, born with the aim of developing space-based global environmental monitoring services to ensure a European autonomous capacity for Earth Observation, comprises a Space Component, Core Services, and In-situ measurements. The Space Component, coordinated by ESA, has seven Sentinel satellites in orbit, with further missions planned, and is complemented by contributing missions, in-situ sensors and numerical models, and delivers many terabytes of accurate climate and environmental data, free and open, every day to hundreds of thousands of users. This makes Copernicus the biggest provider of Earth Observation data in the world.</span>

Earth Observation products  for Science and Innovation in the Black Sea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilaure Grégoire ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Sea Surface Salinity ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Ocean Colour ◽  
Surface Salinity ◽  
Mesoscale Dynamics

&lt;p&gt;The Black Sea is a small enclosed basin where coastal regions have a large influence and mesoscale signals dominate the dynamics (the Rossby radius of deformation is about 20km). Large riverine inputs, mainly on the northwestern shelf, induce well-marked horizontal gradients in the distribution of the Black Sea salinity and optical characteristics: coastal and shelf waters have very low salinity and contain large amounts of optically active materials (e.g. coloured dissolved organic matter) and its oligotrophic deep sea has a salinity around 18.2. The presence of these contrasting water characteristics in a relatively small enclosed environment, combined with land contamination and the specificities of its atmospheric composition(e.g. high cloud coverage, aerosols) make the Black Sea a challenging area for the development of high quality satellite products.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We present first results from a 2-year on-going ESA-funded project, EO4SIBS (Earth Observation for Science and Innovation in the Black Sea) dedicated to the development, and subsequent scientific analysis, of new algorithms and products. In particular, ocean colour products (chlorophyll-a and total suspended matter concentrations, turbidity) were produced from Sentinel 3 (S3) OLCI data combining different algorithms selected based on an automatic water mass classification procedure (case-1 versus case-2 waters). In specific areas, S3-OLCI and Sentinel 2-MSI data were merged to address local features. A revised gridded altimetry product based on 5-Hz along track data (combining Cryosat and S3 SAR) was produced and validated in the coastal zone with tide gauge data. Sea Surface Salinity was derived from the L-Band measured by SMOS and compared with in-situ surface salinity data from field sampling and Argo.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All these products are now being integrated to further understand the Black Sea physical and biogeochemical functioning (e.g., plume and productivity patterns, mesoscale dynamics, deoxygenation). For instance, the Black Sea mesoscale dynamics are inferred from the 5-Hz altimetry product using an eddy detection and tracking algorithm. The quality of the eddy mapping is assessed by comparison with visible and infrared satellite products while the derived velocities are compared with drifters. Also, the benefit of assimilating ocean colour data in the Black Sea operational model (also known as CMEMS BS-MFC BIO) for the prediction of the Black Sea ecosystem will&amp;#160; be illustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gridded products are archived as CF-compliant NetCDF files and disseminated through ncWMS protocol. In-situ data are modeled as vector points in a PostGIS database. A web portal is being implemented in order to propose an efficient spatiotemporal exploration of both data sources in a user-friendly interface, including interactive map layers and export possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We conclude with a set of recommendations for observational requirements needed&amp;#160; to increase the quality of satellite products in the Black Sea and to be able to use the full potential of current and new information provided by&amp;#160; satellites.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Education and training in Brazilian botanical gardens: are we achieving GSPC targets?

Rodriguésia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1603-1612
Author(s):  
Tania Maria Cerati
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Plant Conservation ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Ex Situ ◽  
The Public ◽  
Botanical Gardens ◽  
Representative Species ◽  
Education And Awareness

Abstract Engage, educate and raise public awareness of the importance of plant diversity is the means through which plant conservation can be achieved. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is a programme to halt the loss of plant diversity and recognize botanical gardens as a partners. This paper investigates the implementation of targets 14 and 15 GSPC in Brazilian botanic gardens specially in education and awareness about plant diversity and trained people. A survey was carried out on the institutional websites of 21 gardens registered in the National System of Botanical Gardens Registration to identify actions that follow the guidelines of these two targets. Websites outdated, difficult access and lack online resources for the public shows us that internet tools are poorly used to divulgation. The target 14's activities performed in most gardens are educational visits and environmental interpretation and explore collections in situ and ex situ from representative species of regional flora. Trained people is held in all gardens but some stand out as important research centers and graduate programs. Despite the efforts Brazilian botanical gardens need improve the public communication and develop strategies to measure the targets progress.

A Sentinel-1 based European crop parcel map using 2018 in-situ LUCAS Copernicus observations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verhegghen Astrid ◽  
d'Andrimont Raphaël ◽  
Lemoine Guido ◽  
Strobl Peter ◽  
van der Velde Marijn
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
European Union ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Growing Season ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Soft Wheat ◽  
High Quality ◽  
In Situ Data ◽  
Crop Type

&lt;p&gt;Efficient near-real time and wall-to-wall land monitoring is now possible with unprecedented detail because of the fleet of Copernicus Sentinel satellites. This remote sensing paradigm is the consequence of the freely accessible, global, Copernicus data, combined with affordable cloud computing. However, to translate this capacity in accurate products, and to truly benefit from the high spatial detail (~10m) and temporal resolution (~5 days in constellation) of the Sentinels 1 and 2, high quality and timely in-situ data remains crucial. Robust operational monitoring systems are in need of both training and validation data.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here, we demonstrate the potential of Sentinel 1 observations and complementary high-quality in-situ data to generate a crop type map at continental scale. In 2018, the Land Cover and Land Use Area frame Survey (LUCAS) carried out in the European Union contained a specific Copernicus module corresponding to 93.091 polygons surveyed in-situ. In contrast to the usual LUCAS point observation, the Copernicus protocol provides data on the extent of homogeneous land cover for a maximum size of 100 x 100 m, making it meaningful for remote sensing applications. After filtering the polygons to retrieve only high quality sample, a sample was selected to explore the accuracy of crop type maps at different moments of the 2018 growing season over Europe. The time series of 10 days VV and VH were classified using Random Forest models. The crops that were mapped correspond to the 13 major crops in Europe and are those that are monitored and forecast by the JRC MARS activities (soft wheat, maize, rapeseed, barley, potatoes, ...). Overall, reasonable accuracies were obtained (~80%). Although no a priori parcel delineation was used, it was encouraging to observe the relative homogeneity of pixel classification results within the same parcel. In the context of forecasting, we specifically assessed at what time in the growing season accuracies moved beyond a set threshold for the different crops. This ranged from May for winter crops such as soft wheat, and September for summer crops such as maize.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our results contribute to the discussion regarding the usefulness, benefits, as well as weaknesses, of the newly acquired LUCAS Copernicus data. Doing so, this study demonstrates the potential of in-situ surveys such as LUCAS Copernicus module&amp;#160; specifically targeted for Earth Observation applications. Future improvements to the LUCAS Copernicus survey methodology are suggested. Importantly, now that LUCAS has been postponed to 2022, and aligned with the Copernicus space program, we advocate for a European Union wide systematic and representative in-situ sample campaign relevant for Earth Observation applications, beyond the traditional LUCAS survey.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

Metrology for Climate Sciences: The European Metrology Network for Climate and Ocean Observation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Woolliams ◽  
Paola Fisicaro ◽  
Nigel Fox ◽  
Céline Pascale ◽  
Steffen Seitz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Seasonal Effects ◽  
Climate Trend ◽  
National Metrology Institutes ◽  
Wide Range

&lt;div&gt; &lt;p&gt;Environmental observations of essential climate variables&amp;#160;(ECVs)&amp;#160;and related quantities made by satellites&amp;#160;and&amp;#160;in situ observational networks are used for a wide range of societal applications.&amp;#160;To&amp;#8239;identify&amp;#8239;a small climate trend&amp;#8239;from&amp;#8239;an observational record that is also sensitive to changes in weather,&amp;#8239;to&amp;#8239;seasonal effects&amp;#160;and to&amp;#8239;geophysical processes, it is essential that observations&amp;#160;have a&amp;#160;stable&amp;#160;basis that holds for&amp;#160;multiple decades, whilst&amp;#160;still allowing for changes in the observation instrumentation and operational procedures.&amp;#8239;To achieve this,&amp;#160;all aspects of data collection and handling&amp;#160;must be&amp;#160;underpinned by robust quality assurance.&amp;#160;The resultant data should also be&amp;#160;linked&amp;#160;to a common reference, with well-understood uncertainty analysis, so that observations are interoperable&amp;#8239;and&amp;#8239;coherent; in other words, measurements by different organisations, different instruments and different techniques&amp;#8239;should be able to&amp;#8239;be&amp;#8239;meaningfully&amp;#8239;combined&amp;#8239;and compared.&amp;#8239;&amp;#8239;&amp;#8239;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt; &lt;p&gt;Metrology, the science of measurement, can provide a critical role in enabling robust, interoperable and stable observational records and can aid users in judging the fitness-for-purpose of such records.&amp;#8239;In addition to Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) monitoring principles, metrology&amp;#8217;s value, and the role of National Metrology Institutes (NMI)&amp;#8239;in observations,&amp;#8239;has been recognised in initiatives such as the Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observation (QA4EO)&amp;#8239;established&amp;#8239;by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and in the implementation plans of the World Meteorological Organization&amp;#8217;s (WMO&amp;#8217;s), Global Atmosphere Watch and the European Ocean Observing System.&amp;#8239;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt; &lt;p&gt;The European Association for National Metrology Institutes (EURAMET) has recently created the &amp;#8220;European Metrology Network (EMN) for Climate and Ocean Observation&amp;#8221; to support further engagement of the expert communities with metrologists at national metrology insitutes&amp;#8239;and to&amp;#8239;encourage&amp;#8239;Europe&amp;#8217;s metrologists to coordinate their research in response to community needs. The EMN&amp;#8239;has a scope that&amp;#8239;covers metrological support for&amp;#8239;in situ and remote sensing observations&amp;#8239;of atmosphere, land and ocean ECVs&amp;#8239;(and related parameters)&amp;#8239;for climate applications. It also covers the&amp;#8239;additional economic and ecological&amp;#8239;applications of ocean Essential Ocean Variable (EOV)&amp;#8239;observations. It is the European contribution to a global effort to further enhance metrological best practice into such observations&amp;#8239;through targeted research efforts.&amp;#8239;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt; &lt;p&gt;In late 2019 and early 2020 the EMN carried out a survey to identify the need for metrology within the observational communities and held a webinar workshop to prioritise the identified needs. Here we present the results of the survey and discuss the role that metrology can play in the climate observing system of the future.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;

scholarly journals Development of a Dynamic Web Mapping Service for Vegetation Productivity Using Earth Observation and in situ Sensors in a Sensor Web Based Approach

Sensors ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 2371-2388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lammert Kooistra ◽  
Aldo Bergsma ◽  
Beatus Chuma ◽  
Sytze De Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Earth Observation ◽  
Vegetation Productivity ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Web Mapping ◽  
Sensor Web ◽  
Dynamic Web ◽  
In Situ Sensors

scholarly journals Evolution of soil and plant parameters on the agricultural Gebesee test site: a database for the set-up and validation of EO-LDAS and other satellite-aided retrieval models

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sina C. Truckenbrodt ◽  
Christiane C. Schmullius
Keyword(s):  
Reference Data ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Test Site ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Reference Database ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Monitoring Methods ◽  
Retrieval Models ◽  
In Situ Data

Abstract. Ground reference data are a prerequisite for the calibration, update and validation of retrieval models facilitating the monitoring of land parameters based on Earth Observation data. Here, we describe the acquisition of a comprehensive ground reference database which was elaborated to test and validate the recently developed Earth Observation Land Data Assimilation System (EO-LDAS). In situ data was collected for seven crop types (winter barley, winter wheat, spring wheat, durum, winter rape, potato and sugar beet) cultivated on the agricultural Gebesee test site, central Germany, in 2013 and 2014. The database contains information on hyperspectral surface reflectance, the evolution of biophysical and biochemical plant parameters, phenology, surface conditions, atmospheric states, and a set of ground control points. Ground reference data was gathered with an approximately weekly resolution and on different spatial scales to investigate variations within and between acreages. In situ data collected less than 1 day apart from satellite acquisitions (RapidEye, SPOT5, Landsat-7 and -8) with a cloud coverage ≤ 25 % is available for 10 and 16 days in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The measurements show that the investigated growing seasons were characterized by distinct meteorological conditions causing interannual variations in the parameter evolution. In the article, the experimental design of the field campaigns, and methods employed in the determination of all parameters are described in detail. Insights into the database are provided and potential fields of application are discussed. We hope these data will contribute to a further development of crop monitoring methods based on remote sensing techniques. The database is freely available at PANGAEA (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.874251).

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